Do You Need To Be An Expert?

To a 5-year old child, their kindergarten teacher is an expert at math because she knows that 1 apple plus 1 apple equals two apples. Yay! But a 20-year old college student preparing to be a rocket scientist probably knows more about math and visualization than 100 kindergarten teachers combined.

But does that make the kindergarten teacher any less of an expert? No. Because in the eyes of her audience she’s a genius. And that’s all that matters.

When you’re blogging, your audience defines your level of expertise, just like that kindergarten class. Here’s how it works…

The people who visit your blog will do so because they’re looking for answers to questions. They’ll type a question into their search engine and if you’ve answered that question on your blog your link will appear in their search results. You’ll look like an expert to these searchers because you were able to answer their question.

Looking at it from the opposite angle, if you haven’t answered that question because it’s beyond your level of expertise, then your blog won’t appear in the search results. Those searchers will have to choose a blogger who’s more of an expert than you are if they want that question answered.

Being An Expert Makes Blogging Easier

The most difficult aspect of blogging is all the content creation you need to do, and in most cases that means writing hundreds or thousands of blog posts. The more you know about your topic, the easier this process is.

You can already anticipate the questions most of your readers are going to ask, and chances are you can answer a lot of them right off the top of your head. A typical 500-word blog post might take you only minutes to write.

On the other hand, if you’re blogging over your head to an audience who needs more expert guidance, then you’re going to have to do tons of research for every single blog post. You’ll have to do research just to find out what your readers want to know and you won’t be able to answer any of their questions without more research. In the end, all of that research won’t really matter because your readers are going to see right through you, anyway.

Blogging Helps Make You An Expert

Whatever your level of expertise, your readers will help make you even more of an expert. As your followers learn everything you have to teach them, they’ll start asking questions. But because you and your readers are now essentially at the same level, their questions will be just a step above your knowledge level. You may have to do a little research but it won’t be much of a reach. It would be like one of those kindergarten kids raising his hand and asking his teacher, “Yeah, but what happens when you eat one of those apples?”

The more you know about whatever you’re blogging about the easier it is to produce content and attract a larger audience. And as long as you’ve attracted an audience that things you’re an expert, that’s all that really matters.

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